4 ms·

Bandwidth as a constitutional right in addition to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

• deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
• patio11 17y ago
  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not guaranteed anywhere in the Constitution. Those three are a rhetorical flourish in the Declaration of Independence, and do not create enforceable legal rights for Americans. The Constitution guarantees enforceable negative rights, for example, it forbids the government from killing (or otherwise punishing) you without due process of law. The Constitution, by design, doesn't establish positive rights. An example of a positive right is "You have the right to an education." Positive rights suffer from implementation issues, expanding government creep as pressure groups suffer rights-envy, and the generic problems associated with state-provided services. An example of an implementation issue: the Japanese Constitution guarantees that "All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided for by law." This has been interpreted as making it unconstitutional to remove students from mainstream classrooms, regardless of behavioral disability or a distressing propensity to stab teachers in the neck. An example of rights-envy: Once you have one positive right, every pressure group under the sun will want their own mandate. The argument will sound something like this: "The constitution guarantees bandwidth, food to eat is a lot more important than bandwidth, the constitution should guarantee food, too." Other favorites for expansion are health care, education, and sexual services. (Oh, Europe, what a continent.) The American political consensus is that positive rights are not desirable at the federal constitutional level.
  • detcader 17y ago
    Nice comment; though, I think the OP was just comedically endorsing Net Neutrality, which, iirc, asserts a negative right.
    • byrneseyeview 17y ago
      Net Neutrality isn't a negative right. If you own a network, net neutrality takes away from your ability to use it as you see fit; if you want, for whatever reason, to dick around with your customers and block Craigslist, you should be able to do so -- just like a newspaper can refuse to run an ad, or even refuse to write about a story.
      • netcharmer 17y ago
        In my opinion, newspaper is not a right analogy. Newspapers provide content, ISPs don't. I can understand if, say, National Geographic puts some restriction on the online content but why should my ISP decides if I can access National Geographic or not. Telephone networks is the right analogy here - will you allow your telephone provider to control whom you can call?
        • roundsquare 17y ago
          will you allow your telephone provider to control whom you can call? Not now I won't, because that would be changing the service I'm getting to something I didn't sign up for. If I got an offer tomorrow for a "limited" phone service I would turn it down, but I wouldn't consider it immoral or bad or something that shouldn't exist.
  • iamwil 17y ago
    It's not HN until someone corrects you with facts. I admit I wasn't clear that L,L,PofH was guaranteed anywhere in the constitution. But with my one-liner, the point I hoped to get across was that I do think that it should be extended to access to the web and its information, as it becomes more ubiquitous and integrated in our lives. I named it "bandwidth" mostly as a remark to how I wished I had more of it.
• mynameishere 17y ago
  Look, you share an appallingly common ignorance of American history and law. Okay, fine. By why in the name of all that defies ignorance and stupidity would you equate life and liberty with Bandwidth for god's sake? Seriously. Bandwidth: 15/dollars a month.
  • iamwil 17y ago
    Embarrassingly so, I'm afraid. It's been a while since I read up on my American history and law as any good citizen should, I suppose. But all the same, I still stand by my assertion above later in the thread.